


some say God is where we put our sorrows

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Season 1, Season 2, Trans Dean Winchester (Background), Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:02:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29970906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Dean is biting Valentine's chocolate off of his fingernails, and then he’s biting the flesh, and then he’s sitting in history class wondering if he’s going to go to Hell when he dies.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Kudos: 4





	some say God is where we put our sorrows

_“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us._

_These, our bodies, possessed by light._

_Tell me we'll never get used to it.”_

_— Richard Siken, “Crush,”_

Dean decides to reunite with his brother in the middle of digging up a grave. The headstone’s engravings are partially obscured by at least a decade’s worth of uncleaned grit and moss. The digging leaves an ache in his shoulders and cramps his forearm something awful, discomfort pooling in the small of his back and rubbing against his palms. His father wouldn’t have helped, had he been here, but Sam would have. Except the latter isn’t here either, and Dean only has the means to find one of them.

The wooden coffin is decayed to the point that his shovel cuts right through it, and then there’s a harsh thud and _crunch_ as the tip impales what’s left of “Bernice.” 

Dust and coffin lid brushed aside, she’s a touch more sickening than most of the corpses Dean has seen in his twenty-odd years. The shovel cut through her abdomen, just under her chest— wilted breasts bared upwards, the remains of the cloth that had covered them long-deteriorated into earth, suggesting a sickening image of femininity in death. The fire that eats away at the image— the Neoclassical painting of fertility, warped by ritualistic murder and an homage to God— creates a unique weight in the pit of his stomach.

(He is twelve and three-quarters, sitting on Bobby’s couch and braiding his little brother’s hair. The older man heaves himself up from his armchair and gestures for Sammy to follow him into the kitchen, leaving Dean alone in the living room. The sight of his brother’s sticky hand in Bobby’s larger one makes him want to curl into some nondescript little insect and spend the rest of his life living off drops of orange juice and crumbs on the floor. He isn’t banned from such things, per say; Holding hands. It isn’t a direct order, or a bark from his father. Rather, it’s a little voice in the back of his head that shouts from the end of a very long tunnel, leaving only echoes to steer Dean’s decision-making.

He picks at the scabbed over wound on his elbow for the second time that week, and lets what little blood wells up through his flesh smear onto the couch, as if to, in some weak attempt, rebel against the situation. But Bobby’s couch has never done wrong by him, so he licks his thumb and does his best to get rid of the stain before his surrogate father and little brother come back into the living room.

His elbow still stings, and so he let’s it bleed onto his red-patterned shirt instead.)

The drive from Illinois to California drags on longer than Dean had intended, and he arrives at Sam’s dorm late on Halloween, all the lights in the building either dimmed or turned off completely. It isn’t one of the high-class student housing buildings, many of which he saw as he drove through campus. It doesn’t have a pleasant view of sprawling grass or courtyards full of students. Instead, it looks over an alley and a crowded street with dead maple leaves all over the sidewalk. But it hasn’t been burnt to the ground, and isn’t furnished with leather seats and a steering wheel, so Dean can’t really complain.

He essentially breaks in, fumbling with their door’s lock but leaving it intact by picking instead of snapping it. Before purposefully creaking on the last step to their second floor, Dean considers turning back. There’s a twist of anxiety in his chest and he feels as though he could be sick; some wild, raging animal refusing to lap up the forgiveness he has tried so hard to gain. He was left, after all. Left with his father— at his whims, his sharp voice, and left, too, within their shared dredge of grief. It was always sticky, like mud, like Louisiana swamp, pulling Dean down deeper and deeper the more he struggled. 

He perseveres. Their hug is so brief and foreign, nothing like their childhood embraces, which communicated a need for one another beyond anything else. Dean is hugging a stranger with bags under his eyes, hair pulled up by what Dean guesses to be his girlfriend’s hairband. Jess is kind and strong and though Sammy doesn’t know it, a lot like their mother. Blond hair and a stubborn gait, with a mouth that snaps like an angry firework. Sam used to whip out retorts just like her, and their mother, but Dean can’t help but notice his brother speaks differently now. Slower, more thoughtful— long gone is the lilt he’d caught like strep throat, growing up in the south. No more sunny drawl in the back of his mouth.

Sam speaks— unintentionally, most likely— as though he is _better than;_ as though he is _above;_ as though he is, in essence, what Dean could never be. 

Jess dies, Dean fails. They are equal, now.

(He’s nearly fifteen, and Sam has just turned eleven, when Dean shows him how to stitch up a wound. He hands his brother a curved needle and mint-flavored floss they stole from their motel bathroom, and lets him sew up a gash on Dean’s shoulder with shaky, clammy, little-kid hands. Sammy’s always been uncomfortable around blood, but tries not to show it in front of their father. It’s only natural, he’s so young— so Dean doesn’t blame him for the way his eyes widen and his limbs tremble when he has to put his hands onto Dean’s bloody shoulder, doesn’t reprimand him. Would never reprimand him. But he might have to treat his own cuts and bruises someday, God forbid, so the kid’s gotta learn.

He does a good enough job with the stitches overall, but still sews too far from the edges of the cut and pulls the floss too tightly when he’s done, leaving the edges of the flesh overlapping awkwardly. Dean tells him he did a good job and cleans up the rest of the crusted blood on his shoulder alone in the bathroom after Sam washes his hands and leaves in that little-kid hurry.

It isn’t until Dean is nineteen and has accumulated a myriad of other, all together angrier scars, that the puffy, pink flesh from his brother’s clumsy stitches finally blends in with the rest of his skin.)

Dad hasn’t been in Havre de Grace, Maryland, in at least two months. But his journal points to signs of a pair of werewolves in the area and sure enough, there’s a tan, punk-ish looking man in his early 30’s with teeth too long for their own good, throwing Dean into the side of a table. Sam dives forward and gets the man in his thigh, and god, if the silver didn’t get the wolf, the tetanus would’ve because they really need new knives.

(Dean is biting Valentine's chocolate off of his fingernails, and then he’s biting the flesh, and then he’s sitting in history class wondering if he’s going to go to Hell when he dies. His cuticles are bleeding and he has to keep his hands tucked inside his hoodie sleeves so they don’t stain his blank notebook pages, because he doesn’t care for learning about World War II. It’s his third attempt at 12th grade and he’s kissing a boy whose name he doesn’t know behind school, whose hair is the color of the butterscotch candies that elderly motel owners put in big bowls on their reception’s counters, who thinks Dean is a girl from Wisconsin, and Dean is holding both of their cigarettes between his fingers, and things are okay for the time being.)


End file.
